


Everything We Were

by mwestbelle



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Dark Character, Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:13:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mwestbelle/pseuds/mwestbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He never stopped saying he was going to change the world.  But everyone stopped asking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything We Were

**Author's Note:**

> Written for bandslash_kink and beta'd by the lovely misswonderheart

Pete was going to change the world, you know. He had so much, _so much_ inside him--so many words and ideas and thoughts and dreams and plans all streaming around in his head, rubbing up against memories and bumping out vocabulary lists and errands, that he just couldn’t imagine that at least one of them could _not_ change the world. That was his answer for practically everything in those days, those beautiful clean days at the end of high school and right after. _Why not college, Pete?_ Sorry, no time, I’m going to change the world. _Still living with your mom, Pete?_ Hey, the rent is cheap and I’ve got to save my cash to change the world. _A dead-end job down at the gas station, really, Pete?_ Don’t knock it man, I’m just waiting until it’s time to change the world.

 _The world was fresh then, and looking back, Pete isn’t entirely sure why he was so convinced it needed changing, but young Pete knew deep in his heart that the world was going to change and it was going to be his words, his ideas, his thoughts, dreams, plans that did it. Young Pete--less tattoos, more smiles than Old Pete, Now Pete--wrote all day, every day. He scribbled notes in journals, posted second-by-second accounts of his life to the web, composed free verse in his head while ringing up cigarettes and air fresheners. He wrote for a whole summer, and couldn’t stop smiling, even when friends started packing up and shipping off to college, when work was long hours and low pay, when family asked what he was up to and wrinkled their collective nose at his replies, because who cared what they thought? He was going to change the world._

 _But then fall came, fall came and a new school year didn’t start, and nothing changed really, except his mom started to look a little gray around the eyes and he looked down at his journals and saw that his world-changing ideas were just a bunch of half-formed, generally nonsensical, poorly spelled ramblings. So, in a way, everything changed._

 _What he needed was someone else. Someone new, to take his words and make them _right_. To turn a few scrambles of lowercase letters into a statement, into power, beauty, _music_._

 _Pete didn’t meet that someone._

 _He never stopped saying he was going to change the world. But everyone stopped asking._

 _So here’s Pete. The world did change, ironically enough, but it changed around him, and not in any way he would have asked for. Pete changed, too. He got older, darker, a lot more ink and a lot less hope. Still works at the gas station. Still lives with his mother. He doesn’t write anymore, and he tries hard as he can not to think. He’d love to ignore the constant stream of words scrolling over and over through his mind, poetry on ticker tape, rising and falling quotes on dreams._

 _He’s just tucking the new issue of Kerrang carefully back into the plastic magazine rack in front of the register--he can’t actually afford to buy the magazine regularly, so he convinced enough of the high school kids who come in to buy candy and soda to make a fuss until the manager started stocking it, and now he reads it under the counter, once in a while tearing out a glossy page he just has to tack up on his wall and blaming “those damn teenagers” when the manager throws a fit over damaged merchandise--and heading out for the night when he runs into Bill, who’s gorgeous and works the late-late shift._

 _“Hey, Pete.” It’s more than a greeting, it’s the start of a conversation, and Pete pauses, one arm of his hoodie pulled down past his fingertips and the other still pushed up to his elbow. “I’ve got concert tickets for Friday and my guy totally bailed on me. Want to be my escort?” He bats his eyelashes, and Pete smiles, even though he’s faintly confused. He sees Bill almost every night when they change shifts, usually says hey, if he’s running behind or Bill’s early he listens to Bill bitch about his boyfriend (Travis. Or Gabe. Possibly both, Pete isn’t entirely sure, he doesn’t really listen that closely) and his latest fuck-up while he punches out._

 _Pete has never talked about himself, they’ve never seen each other outside the station, and the only reason he knows Bill’s last name is because that’s the only name the manager refers to him by (“That damn Beckett,” he likes to lean against the end of the counter while Pete unwraps fresh cartons of cigarettes, “half the time he leaves the lights on, and I think he’s stealing condoms.” Pete knows for a fact that Bill is stealing condoms, but he would never rat out his fellow counter-slave to the Man.). He hadn’t thought they were friends, even hey-I’ve-got-no-one-else friends, but apparently Bill thinks differently._

 _“Yeah, sure, who’s playing?”_

 _“I don’t know, something about chemicals. And falling?” Bill shrugs, languid and graceful. “Maybe. I don’t know.” And it’s not really surprising because, even though Pete barely knows Bill Beckett, he has picked up on a few things. Bill is completely comfortable in how pretty he is--a lot of the pretty (really pretty, girl-pretty) guys Pete’s known act confident and flirty, but always have this underlying awkwardness, unsure and unhappy, overcompensating in one direction or the other. Bill’s not like that. He wears his girl-jeans (Pete has no idea where Bill gets them, since his thighs go from here to the inner city) with scoop neck tees or button-up dress shirts, is equally comfortable using his pouted Cupid’s bow of a mouth to blow kisses or curse like a sailor. He’s not girly, or manly, or anything. He’s just Bill, and Pete admires that._

 _Another thing is that, no matter what his boyfriend does (Gabe, or Travis, or whoever) Bill loves totally and unabashedly. Pete isn’t interested in Bill, but he can’t help but be jealous of Gravis/Tabe because even when Bill is complaining about a forgotten date or dirty underwear in his sink (“The _kitchen sink_ , Pete, I mean, fuck, I don‘t care how stoned you are, how does that ever seem okay?”), there’s a softness in his eyes that Pete would kill for. But the currently relevant thing Pete knows about Bill Beckett is that he’s not one for details. It’s why he keeps leaving the lights on, or sometimes hands people back the bills they just paid with instead of their change. He’s on his own planet and things down here don’t generally faze him. So Pete doesn’t worry about it, just laughs and scribbles his cell number down on the back of a subscription card that fell out of the magazine and tells Bill to give him the details. Doesn’t really matter to him who the band is--it will be, as his mom likes to mention at least weekly, good for him to get out of the house._

 _The rest of the week is pretty dull--the kid who’s trying to convince Pete to sell him a pack of cigarettes turns out to be the little brother of a guy Pete went to high school with, which is both humorous in it’s awkwardness and horribly depressing because, hey, Pete’s still here--and Bill picks him up directly from work on Friday._

 _“Don’t you have a shift tonight?” Pete buckles his seatbelt and Bill waves a hand airily and almost drifts into the oncoming lane._

 _“Please. Like I’d let my crappy minimum wage job get in the way of my Friday night.” Pete smiles, but inside it’s sharp because for Bill, it’s just a job he could ditch anytime and for Pete, well, Pete’s afraid this is pretty much it. Bill is at least five years younger than he is, and he’s got a chance. He might very well end up trapped in the gas station just like Pete found himself to be, but there’s the chance that he might _not_ , and that’s a chance Pete doesn’t have. Bill doesn’t notice Pete’s tension of course, because they aren’t friends, not really, and launches into some highly detailed story complete with very good imitations of people Pete doesn’t know and expansive hand gestures that are causing quite the stir with other drivers on the road, who seem to be of the opinion that Bill should stay in his own lane, go at a fairly constant speed, and pay some passing attention to road signs, opinions that Bill apparently disagrees vehemently with. Pete isn’t really listening, just looking out the window, waving at the people who flip them off, and wondering idly what his mother will bury him in after he dies either at the hands of fiery car crash or road raged redneck (He’s pretty sure it would be the brown suit, which is distressing. He hates that suit.)_

 _He has to blink himself back to the present when they pull up to the venue because, wow. He was expecting some back-roads bar, maybe a small club and this…this is not either of those things. This is an actual _amphitheater_ , and when he looks up at the massive posters and banners hanging everywhere, he finally realizes that this isn’t some friend-of-a-guy-who-knows-a-guy thing like he’s used to. He flashes back to scanning Kerrang and wonders how he hadn’t put two and two together when Bill said concert on Friday when he _knew_ that Friday was the first tour date for the area and he had just never even considered going because how the fuck would he afford tickets (how the fuck did Bill afford tickets?) and shit, this isn’t some guys getting up and playing a couple half-assed, half-plagiarized riffs. This is Fall Out and Chemical Romantics live in fucking concert._

 _“Bill,” he grabs the sleeve of Bill’s shirt to stop him, and the V-neck is so low he almost flashes some nipple to the waiting teenagers. Bill doesn’t seem to mind, doesn’t bother trying to readjust his top, just looks back at Pete and smiles._

 _“What?”_

 _“You, you,” _you didn’t tell me_ he wants to say _you didn’t give me any warning_ , but Bill’s smile twists into a smug little smirk quickly and Pete scowls, “you fucker.” Bill laughs, warm and loud, and he gets nasty looks from a few black-drenched girls waiting in line that he either doesn’t notice or ignores completely._

 _“C’mon, Pete, don’t be mad at me.” He lowers his lashes mock-demurely, and pouts a little. “You wouldn’t have come if I’d told you, would you?” And no, he wouldn’t have casually accepted a free “extra ticket” if he’d known it was an extra ticket that probably cost over a hundred dollars. Speaking of, he digs in his pocket to thrust the slip of stock paper in Bill’s nose which, yeah, is kind of farther away and higher up than he thought so the gesture probably isn’t as threatening as it could be._

 _“How the fuck did you afford these?” Bill just smiles, ignoring the waving ticket in his face._

 _“My guy knows a guy,” he shrugs like it’s no big deal. “It’s no big deal. Look, if you don’t want it, I can scalp it.” He reaches out lazily, like he knows that Pete’s going to snatch the ticket back to his chest (which he does). “Are we done freaking out now?”_

 _He doesn’t wait for an answer, just strides off towards the gates, bypassing at least two hundred kids packing in against the chain-link fence. Pete nearly has to jog to keep up, stupid long-legged bastard._

 _“There’s a line, you realize,” he hisses when he catches up. Bill just tosses his hair and laughs._

 _“Cute _and_ funny, jesus. It’s a pity you’re so short.”_

 _“Just because I’m not a fucking Amazon princess,” he grumbles, and Bill laughs again. They reach the gate, where a really giant guy is keeping the crowd at bay, and Pete feels himself shrinking into his shoes. When he was Young Pete, he would have no problem bursting his way to the front of a line, doling out winks and playful (sometimes not so playful) innuendo, but that’s not him anymore. Especially with all these bug-eyed teens around, he just feels old and outdated. Even his tattoos feel like they’re crawling on his skin, trying to hide. Fake, show-off, pretender to the throne. But Bill flashes the bouncer guy a dazzling smile, and shows him their tickets. He nods and lets them through, and Bill flounces past with Pete right behind, ignoring the outraged and disappointed squawks from behind them._

 _They end up in about the middle of the pit, unable to push their way farther forward, despite Bill’s best efforts. It doesn’t make a huge difference to him, of course, since he’s a head taller than most of the kids around. Pete can’t see a lot besides bad dye-jobs, but there are video screens and besides, he’s here to listen to music, not drool over the band. Bill bounces on his heels, obviously discontented standing still._

 _“Hey Twiggy.” Pete looks over his shoulder to see a kid, probably not older than sixteen, with more acne than piercings scowling at them. “Cut it out.” Pete’s not sure how Bill will react to this--he doesn’t really know him--and he doesn’t want them to get kicked out for fighting before the bands even start. But he didn’t have to worry. Bill just smiles sweetly at the kid and flips him off._

 _“Go fuck yourself, kid.” The kid makes an aggrieved sound, but turns back to his buddies, clearly not brave enough to really start something. Bill turns back and shakes his head, waves of brown hair falling into new patterns over his shoulders and around his face. “Snot-nosed brat, seriously.” Pete nods absent-mindedly, because the lights are starting to change on stage._

 _The opening band is pretty good--nothing to write home about, but enough to get the blood flowing which, really, is what they need to do. The stage goes pitch black after the lead singer announces “Chemical Romantics, though there’s nothing romantic about these fuckers” to the screeched delight of girls and boys in the audience._

 _Pete read an article in Blender that described a Chemical Romantics show as “the melodic apocalypse.” He feels it now, pulsing with bass rhythms that go straight to his rib cage. It’s concentrated chaos on stage, with pyrotechnic bursts from all sides, flashing lights, and the lead singer flailing and hissing as he belts his way through the set with every movement--a lascivious wink or a snarl--exaggerated beyond normal human capacity (he greatly resembles someone who has been recently electrocuted, with giant dark circles painted around his eyes and his black-and-white hair sticking up in all directions). Pete’s fairly certain one of the guitarists will be dead by the end of show, with the way he’s flinging himself around without care for the safety of himself, the set, or his bandmates. He almost gets caught in a spout of fire near the front of the stage, and does an insane backbend but keeps on playing. Pete is greatly impressed._

 _The whole set is high energy, with barely a break. By the time the last sparks fade, Pete’s got that delicious buzzing in his ears. He won’t be able to hear properly at least until morning, and he thought he had forgotten how nice it was. Bill bumps him playfully and shoots a quick thumbs up that Pete returns. He really owes Bill for this._

 _The next set they do is just as frantic as the first, but now that Pete’s used to the frenzied style, he understands it better. In a lot of ways, the performance is like an impressionistic painting--instead of laying their message out on the table, there are thousands and thousands of strokes dancing around it. Each toothy grin, obscure metaphor, shrieked chorus, and driving beat is another dab of paint that will, combined, reveal the overarching ideal. At least, that’s what Pete thinks while he admires the bassist’s heavily buckled boots; it might just be insanity brought on by sweat and the press of the crowd against his back. It’s really been too long. He never actually decided that he wasn’t going to go to shows anymore, he just…didn’t. At some point, the rush of being in the crowd had gotten crushed by that realization of “hey, I’m not one of you.” Of “when I was your age, you were still smashing peas with your thumb in your high chair.” It just wasn’t fun anymore. Appraising eyes all the time--he was used to being looked at, he _lived_ off of being watched, but that was when they were judging his tattoos, his haircut, the twist of his lips, whose band he had splayed across his chest. They started looking at him, and all that was in their eyes was “old.” And sure, it worked out sometimes, and it was cool, being sought by girls and boys with interesting hair and black nails. But after a while, he didn’t want to be a novelty, another piece of another teenage rebellion to be put up on the shelf next to indie label CDs and ironic eyeliner. It got easier and easier to stand in the back--he’d always scoffed as those assholes who stayed out of the pit, because how could you enjoy music if you weren’t right there in the middle of it--and easier and easier to say “thanks, but no thanks“ when friends played. And when they stopped asking him, it just got remarkably easy to not to go at all._

 _But he doesn’t feel that now, and he’s not sure if that’s the virtue of this massive sea of people over the inclusive and cramped clubs of the scene--no one is looking at him, no one cares--or just relief after so long, or maybe they never were staring, scowling, judging, maybe it was all in his head all along. Whatever the case, he’s here, and it’s nice, and Chemical Romantics are clearing off the stage, much to the shrill dismay of the crowd._

 _Fall Out, Pete knows, is really a band in name only. There are multiple people in it, technically, but the singer, he _is_ Fall Out. He writes all the lyrics, all the music--every word, every riff, every beat is all his. And he’s a polarizing figure. He hates being on camera, is seldom photographed, seldom interviews, but it hasn’t kept Fall Out from being the center of a lot of media coverage recently, and not the good kind. Photographs keep surfacing--from concerts, autograph lines, TRL, some dead-end Starbucks. There’s nothing technically inappropriate about them, but it hasn’t stopped the parent groups from working into a frenzy, because in every shot, it’s teenagers. Teenagers, with slack-faced expressions that can only be called “bliss.” Teenagers on their knees._

Pete hadn’t really thought much about it. Who cared if a couple of kids were getting a little too into the music? It wasn’t like he hadn’t done stupid shit for bands he liked when he was that age.

But now he’s not thinking at all. He can’t see anything; the band--little more than glorified back-up musicians, really--is too far back, and the man himself is blocked from view. But he can hear. He can hear perfectly, because the crowd is suddenly silent. Not hushed, not quiet. _Silent_. He knows, logically, that the singer would have to use a microphone if just because the arena is so large, but in this instant all logic has left him, and he hates the sound system for interfering, for coming between him and that voice.

Pete would kill for that voice. Not to have it, no, though he thinks, he _knows_ that if he sounded like that the world would be throwing itself at his feet to be changed. But he doesn’t want that voice, because he knows that if he heard it from inside his own head, there’s no way it could be as beautiful, as strong, as perfect as it is now. Pete wouldn’t kill to have that voice, but if that voice told him to kill he would. He isn’t sure how he knows, but there’s something that’s twisting in his stomach (or maybe it’s his heart) that tells him _yes_. Also _please_ and _help_ , but the _yes_ is strongest.

He can’t really pick out the words--for some reason the dead quiet is almost harder to hear in than the deafening shrieks from before, and nothing seems to be settling properly in his brain--but for the first time in his life, the words don’t matter. He finds himself closing his eyes, letting the sound just echo around in his mind, slip-sliding between thoughts and memories until it settles like a warm weight just below bone.

Too soon, Bill is yanking on his wrist. The rest of the crowd is streaming out through the same chain-link gates they came through, but Bill hustles him behind a concession stand and tugs on his sleeve.

“Trade with me.”

“What?” Bill slides his fingers under the hem of his own shirt and peels it off.

“Trade with me.”

“Fuck--” He reaches for Pete, grabbing at his shirt, and Pete does his best to bat the insistent hands away “--no, Bill, what the fuck?”

“C’mon.” Pete sighs and strips his shirt over his head and hands it over. Bill wrestles his way into it, shoulders rolling and pressing together, trying to fit. It was fitted on Pete; on Bill’s it’s ridiculous. The stripe of smooth flesh between his low-slung jeans and the t-shirt’s hem, which barely covers his navel, is practically obscene. Of course, Pete’s not doing much better--Bill’s top has enough elasticity left in the fabric that it fits pretty well, but it scooped low on Bill’s significantly longer chest. Pete feels stupid, but Bill seems satisfied and is already moving again.

Pete follows him to the barricades on the far edge of the stage, and draws even just as Bill straddles the bars and hops over to the other side. He offers Pete his hand, and Pete doesn’t even consider hesitating. They weave through plasticy tents, and the people who pass them smile briefly, obviously too busy with their own duties to consider they may not belong. Unfortunately, considering that a tall guy in a really tight shirt and a short guy with a really deep v-neck may not belong is the duty of some people.

“Hey, boys.” Pete turns around. Big, beefy, _shit_. “Care to flash your IDs?”

But before even Bill can respond--thought not before he opens his mouth--there’s another voice from the direction they were going in. “Oh, hey there.”

Pete turns back around. It’s the singer from Chemical Romantics. Up close, Pete can see that his hair is _really_ insane--he looks like he may have decided to change from black to white-blond and the best way to do so would be to work his way through random chunks of hair, then got bored halfway through and gave up--and there’s a tiny wrinkle in his nose that’s more adorable than you’d expect from the psychotic performance he gave earlier, and his pupils are so blown Pete could probably fall through them.

“Hey.” Bill pounces on the opportunity and splashes on a huge grin. “I’m Bill.”

“Gerard.” He smiles slowly, and his left eye drifts shut for a moment before he shakes his head a little.

Bill bites the side of his lip a little bit, flirty. “I know.”

Gerard laughs, high-pitched and a little empty, and his focus switches to somewhere off in the distance; he rubs the back of his neck with a squint-eyed smile after a few seconds pause, apparently oblivious to the delayed reaction.

“Yeah, well.” He shrugs a little, then blinks once, twice. “You have pretty hair.” He turns abruptly and wanders away. Five feet away, he pauses and looks back. “Coming?” Bill is at his side in a second. He flashes Pete a thumbs up over his shoulder and then they’re gone in the labyrinth of equipment and people. Pete looks back. The guard is gone.

No one’s paying the slightest attention to him, so Pete just takes off in a random direction. He’ll find Bill later, once he’s done with…whatever it is he’s doing. And if not, well, he can always catch a bus. He wanders, imagining that he belongs here. He grins a little at a tech as she passes and she gives him a half-smile and wave. There’s laughter from behind a trailer, and he keeps walking, wandering a little.

“Hey!” He freezes in the hulking shadow of a bus, waiting to be asked for his identification, thrown out, but instead, a hot cup of coffee is pressed into his hands. “Take this in, will you?”

“Um, yeah, sure.” But the guy is already gone, clipboard in hand and Pete is left staring at the steaming cup (Styrofoam, terrible for the environment). There doesn’t seem to be a lot of options at this juncture: he could knock on the bus door and deliver the coffee, or he could not.

He raises his hand to knock, pauses to reconsider, then goes ahead. There’s a long pause, and he’s about to turn away, drink the coffee himself when a voice calls out, beckoning him in. He enters, clambering gracelessly, trying not to spill hot coffee down onto his hand and up his sleeve. When he reaches the top, he peers into the lounge and _whoa._

There’s the guitarist, close curls, sitting on the very edge of a chair like he’ll be jumping up and leaving at any second. But his eyes are drawn immediately, irretrievably, taken hostage by _him_. Leaning back into the couch, holding court, strict dichotomy with the flighty guitar player, and with the dark fedora pushed artfully back, Pete can see that the black he’d seen in press photos from a month ago is almost gone, only lingering at the tips of red hair. Thick-framed glasses and a smirk, and Pete suddenly remembers why he’s even here and holds the cup out half-heartedly.

“Um, I brought coffee.” The two men exchange a look that Pete doesn’t understand, then the guitarist is rising and taking the cup from Pete’s hand.

“Yeah, thanks, man, that’s great.” And he slips past Pete and disappears down the stairs, door clicking shut behind him. Pete’s trying to figure out if he’s supposed to leave now too and has half turned away when he finally speaks.

“I’m Patrick.” Pete doesn’t giggle and twirl his hair (metaphorically) like Bill. Not because he’s too proud or some shit--he’s done a lot of ridiculous things to get attention--but it just feels _wrong._

“I’m Pete.”

Patrick smiles, cheeks rounded and eyes empty. “Come here.” Pete obeys. It won’t be the last time.

***

One week later, Pete’s phone rings. He doesn’t say “hello” (never does) and neither does his caller.

“I’m in Phoenix.” A pause, short bursts of sound leaking through the earpiece, then: “I want you here.”

“I can’t. I have work, and I can’t afford that, I can’t.” Patrick only laughs and hangs up. Pete takes his mom’s credit card out of her wallet while she’s watching television.

***

Pete likes Gerard, really. He’s creative and surprisingly sweet. And no matter what some think or expect, he’s not sadistic or even cruel. He just…forgets sometimes, about things like sound checks and which bus is his and lube.

Still, Pete doesn’t know if he’s ever going to get used to kneeling on the floor of the Chemical bus, mapping out the weave of his jeans beneath his fingertips while Gerard fucks his brother--glasses half-hanging off his face--against the wall and Frank mewls and pulls against the T-shirts looped around his wrists. But Patrick wants him to be friends with the rest of the tour, and he likes making Patrick happy.

“Fuck,” Frank whines in a profane prayer, straining. “Fuck, _fuck_.” Gerard glances over his shoulder, struggling to focus, and Mikey gasps, though Pete can’‘t be sure if it‘s pleasure or his only chance to catch his breath. Mikey never makes sounds like that when Pete’s the one pressing into him, but that could prove either option. He’s a good kid, Pete thinks. Too good for all this.

“Pete--” He’ll never understand the sing-song tone Gerard manages even as his hips snap rough and merciless “--want to help Frankie out, Pete? Be a friend?”

And friend in need is a friend indeed, so Pete crawls forward, palms tingling slightly from the rough nubs of the carpet--the pattern will be mapped into his skin for the rest of the night. The thunk of Frank’s head against the wall when Pete shoves his already unzipped jeans all the way down--no teasing or flirting because for someone more than willing to pass his brother and bandmates around, Gerard doesn’t like to share even the tiniest crumb of anything that could be real affection--provides a percussive break from gasps and whimpers and heavy breathing.

“Fuck, yeah.”

***

The worst part is the kids. Little mobs of them, young and pretty, wide eyes and frayed clothes, more and more after every show. They’d never approached him--some watched him like spooked animals because he wasn’t the one they were looking for. A few figured it out, eventually. First time was at the Vegas show; he was coming around back and suddenly there they were, three of them, emerging from the shadows behind the lamp mounted on the venue wall.

“Hey,” the thinnest one, with the biggest and hollowest eyes, is the leader. He stands too close, close enough that Pete can smell him--the gaminess that comes from too long without bathing with the scent of vanilla too sweet on top.. “Hey.”

Pete looks at him and doesn’t want to anymore, doesn’t want to hear another word he says because he can just tell that it‘s not anything good, but he stands there anyway. The kid doesn’t say anything, though, and they’re in some kind of strange impasse, a silent power struggle that Pete doesn’t think he agreed to be part of until one of the others is suddenly looking at him wide-eyed and worshipful through thick-framed glasses.

“You know him, don’t you?” Pete isn’t quite sure how to respond--he knows who they’re talking about of course, who else?--but the first one bursts in, saying something really fast that Pete prays he heard wrong.

“What?”

“I said--” and the kid manages to make a remarkably flat voice sound surly, even as his cheeks are flushing and he keeps glancing down to wear he’s dragging the toe of his sneaker through the dust, .“--you could fuck me, if you wanted. Or, um, Brendon can suck you off. He’s real good.” Glasses Kid nods enthusiastically, licks his lips nervously, then seems to consider it and licks them again in a slow, gruesome mockery of seduction. Pete feels like throwing up. The third kid is much softer and more rounded than the others, and he folds his arms tight across his chest and glares when Pete catches his eye. Something in his eyes flickers, and he apparently remembers that they’re ( _oh god oh god oh god_ ) trying to get backstage with sexual favors, and his eyes empty a little, softening.

“Whatever you want,” this third kid, who seems to be the most sensible out of them, swallows hard. “We just…we _need_ to--”

“I’m sorry.” Pete almost falls when he flails backwards, the leader kid taking an unsure step towards him, but he has to get away from this. “I, I’m sorry. I can’t.”

He flees behind barricades, and doesn’t look over his shoulder because he knows there will be three pairs of hungry eyes burning into his back.

He’ll see them outside of five more venues, ducking their offers and desperate looks. He gives the leader kid his hoodie in Milwaukee because it’s winter and he’s still standing around on slushy pavement sniffling in fingerless gloves and a ratty vest. The kid bites his lower lip and offers a shaky smile that Pete does his best to return before he ducks inside to avoid the inevitable propositions.

He doesn’t remember if Patrick frowned when he came in without it.

Next show, Minneapolis, they aren’t there. And they’re not at the next, or the next. Pete hopes that they gave up, went home to families that loved them, turned off their iPods and made friends and walked in the sun, got freckles, instead of skulking around nighttime streets. Pete pretends that’s what happened.

He knows it’s not true.

He doesn’t even know their names.

***

Patrick’s hand is tight on the back of his neck and his teeth are sharp in Pete’s lip. Pete groans into the kiss, and he feels Patrick smirking against him. He stops biting and pulls Pete’s head down, aiming him at the place in the crease of his neck that he loves having licked, like Pete couldn‘t find it himself, like Pete hadn‘t licked the bitter-salt of Patrick‘s skin every night. But he obeys, lapping at the sheen of sweat, and nibbling a little--not too much, bruises aren’t acceptable, not even ones that will be hidden by clothing. Patrick makes a sound deep in his throat, somewhere between a groan and a growl.

Patrick stretches him with one, two, three slippery fingers, because he’s not Gerard. Pete wonders sometimes--not now, when Patrick is pressing above him, inside him, all around him, but in other times, the flat times--if maybe it would have been better if it was Gerard. Some pain (he’s tried to figure it out--he isn’t sure if Gerard forgets that he hasn’t used lube or just completely forgets about the necessity of lube in general) in exchange for sweet smiles and wrinkled noses and half-freckled kisses. Behind all the bottles and baggies, or maybe beneath them, there’s real happiness lurking, breaking in through cracks. He hears it in their laughter, can feel the electric connections between them. Patrick doesn’t make him happy. Patrick makes everything so much worse.

Pete closes his eyes when they fuck. Patrick wouldn’t like that, but since he never fucks Pete face-up, he’ll never know. _Lie back,_ Pete says in his head, _and think of England._ (His mom told him that, as part of some joke he only half-remembers. He doesn’t think much about her any more, no room in his head. She used to call, but he never had time to talk. He’s not sure whether he stopped answering or she just stopped calling.)It’s not the best metaphor--he gets off on this, hard and hot and sweaty and everything he could ask for, like the Victorian women were never allowed. But even though he comes--from Patrick’s hand or his own, but never a mouth, because Patrick’s voice is everything he is and no matter what he does for others on the Chemical bus, he’s not allowed to come. He has to walk back, aching and sweating in front of all the techs and roadies, and beg for release (sometimes still in front of everyone, depending on Patrick‘s mood)--he doesn’t enjoy it. He knows how sex can be fun. He never had a partner who reaches this deep inside him--scooping out and squeezing whatever he wants--and it’s more intimate than anything he’d ever imagined, more powerful, more arousing, but one thing it’s not is fun.

When Pete’s around Patrick, all he can feel is this clawing sensation in his chest. Something inside him says _yes_ even when he hears snippets of half-mumbled conversations that he shouldn’t or he watches the other musicians flinch when so much as a rogue glance is thrown their way. He shouldn’t want this, but he does. He wants it so much. Patrick makes him achingly aware of everything he’s missing, every way he’s failed, because Patrick _is_ changing the world

He’s slinking through radio waves and gigabytes, reaching in and twisting. He’s shaping and molding the world like so much Play-doh (the green kind that gets stuck under your fingernails forever) to his own image.

It’s so ugly.


End file.
